It never does. My sister once sent my daughter a Disney DVD but the package had been opened and a hardcore gay porn DVD put in instead, in a plain white sleeve. I was suspicious of the white cardboard sleeve so put the DVD on whilst my daughter was still at school. Good job I did. Even I was shocked. The Royal Mail sorting office here just thought it was highly amusing and said they'd have it if I didn't want it. I went to the police and they said it was Royal Mail's problem. Wrote to RM but never even got a reply.

Yeah, they're inept. If you don't send the item by special delivery, then you get no compensation to its value, only the cost of carriage, if an item is L/S/D. And even then, the contract is with the person who sent the item and RM not with the recipient.

It's pretty shoddy. Especially considering it is a criminal offence to interfere with post until it has been delivered to the address requested.

And it's awful that they didn't care a minor had been sent porn *even* though it may not have been the case that the person doing it knew (though Disney might have been one hell of a give away).

I wasn't condoning theft - just pointing out how easy it is to spot a card in the postal system and how easy it it is to diguise it. If a thief is targeting something he can use then select the obvious posts that may contain cash of gift certificates.

Around my way I'm lucky to have had the same (trustworthy) local postman for the past 10 years. However, it is obvious when he is on holiday or sick as a large amount of mail doesn't get delivery for days at a time or get mis-delivered to the surrounding streets.

I wasn't necessarily saying you were, and the fact cards often come in brightly-coloured envelopes is often a give-away that they might contain something, hence you were 100% correct.

The mail is somewhat sporadic recently anyway - some things are taking ages to arrive, it's often coming past lunchtime or not at all (like today), and what annoys me most is that they're outcarding things without even knocking - even if they did, it is perfectly safe to leave things on a porch which is unsighted from the road, in any case, at the end of a cul-de-sac in a nice area. It's madness. Then you have to get it redelivered, or go and get it from a sorting office which is only open for a couple of hours a day, coincidentally when PEOPLE ARE AT WORK.

As you can tell, I think very highly of RM right now

Well the local sorting office boss told me to "watch it all and see if there's any children involved and if not then it's not serious" I told him no way was I watching 2 hours of that filth so he said they'd watch it then and I could hear the others laughing in the background. My daughter was 6 FFS.

I thought it would have been more recent than that... that's awful. They let that get interfered with and sent to a six year old, and were that nonchalant?

No it was 2001. He said 2 packages must have come open and they'd put the wrong DVD's back in each. He said a lot of hardcore porn is sent through the post in plain white sleeves.

No matter how many times we tell the MIL, she forgets and "risks" popping in a tenner here and there in the cards. The worst time was Christmas, when we lost cards and money. I did wonder if they knew everything was snarled up by the weather, so people expected missing cards - a perfect opportunity to rifle through stuff.

I'd be tempted to post some birthday cards with monopoly money in them, instead.

Or little bits of paper saying "Who's 'aving your missus when you're at work?"

Little acts of revenge, but all perfectly legal.

That's right, blame the poor management and poor service on the union.........how pathetic that you should blame the bodies that protect us all.

Who's that that protect us all, then?

Unfortunately it is the union's and management's fault that most of the staff are now pathetically lazy, and habitual thieves.

If the union and management actually stuck up for good practices, and the union stopped trying to defend sacking of employees who were really sacked for gross misconduct and theft, maybe we'd still have a decent postal service.

I'm afraid we now have a situation where postal workers need to be banned from taking any banknotes onto Royal Mail premises.

There should be random searches at the end of the shift, where any employees found to be carrying banknotes are assumed to have stolen them.

There is no need for any Royal Mail employee to carry banknotes at work. If they need BFH (bus fare home), they can carry it in coins of the realm.

Sorry for old thread dig up but I have just had another birthday card not arrive and a angry google search dug up this thread.............I realized that the only post that I have had go missing over the years as been birthday cards in pink or blue fancy envelopes,they know they are cards and go digging in them for money or gift vouchers.......I never send money in them but it's still the best part of £3.00 in value that gets stolen and undeliverd.

Cards that are sent in plain white envelopes seem mysteriously to arrive.

First class post robbed by first class thieves....

My mate did a building job for someone and was paid in used crumpelled up notes and asked what the customer did for a living. Guess what the reply was, Night Worker at the GPO Sorting Office.
Apparently charities are targeted too, after a big TV Appeal a lot of cash is stolen. Personally I think notes with Dye on them or even serial numbers noted and checked during random searches.

patmcgroin .

i`d love to know the outcome.

Of course there is no excuse for thefts from the post but Royal Mail workers are simply members of the public some of whom will nick anything that isn't screwed down. Just as in other walks of life it is sensible to take precautions not to put temptation in their way.

A few years ago I used to work in Royal Mail at Christmas and in my experience there are a number of things that can make it more likely that the unscrupulous worker could interfere with mail or simply that the letter will not be delivered.

Christmas and birthday cards often have flimsy envelopes which are more likely to tear or become unstuck in transit.

People putting coins in envelopes which rattle around and tear the envelopes open

People not addressing the mail properly. On every shift there was at least one envelope with a name (often something like "Auntie Pat") but with no address. Presumably the sender had written a batch of cards and intended to put the address on later.

People not using the postcode. This means that the letter has to be hand sorted and at Christmas this will be done by temporary staff some of whom are not as able or meticulous as others. It's particularly a problem where there is more than one town of that name; sometimes you just have to guess.

Red envelopes! Virtually any handwritten address is hard to read and is likely to be rejected by the sorting machines. The worst is using silver or gold ink. Very festive but difficult to read under fluorescent light.

Tiny cards. When I worked at Royal Mail there seemed to be a fashion for cards about the size of a gift tag. It is so easy for them to get missed. Conversely, massive cards that don't fit the sorting frames and are easily damaged.

About 17/18 years ago some dude from France sent me 6 x £50 notes in a plain white envelope for an old Hornby Train Set of mine i put on ebay. No recorded delivery, no silver foil no nothing, just his name and address on the back of the envelope. Jeez i was gobsmacked. Back in the 1800s you would have been hung for stealing from a letter.

I'm afraid a large a pit of employees are quite simply thieves.

It's the only business where you have to take out insurance against their employees stealing or breaking your things.

Happened to me a few times when I was a child. A family friend sent me some money in a birthday card when I was about 4 and my mother was furious. She rang up and complained and I was given a Polly Pocket toy (I used to love them) to make up for it. That same friend later wrote on card envelopes 'Photos - do not bend' to ensure it didn't happen again. If it was marked as just having photos in it then there would be less chance of it being stolen. I also had some Christmas presents stolen by a postman neighbour who used to open other people's post and a Santa letter I sent when I was about 8 was also stolen. It's a terrible thing to do and stealing from a child is one of the lowest forms of theft IMO

I had this happen a few years ago.

My family now either send postal orders or special delivery.

I complained in writing to Royal Mail, it took about 9 months but we did receive a check for the money eventually.

I didn't inform the family member who sent it though, as I knew they would be upset to know that it had been stolen & child not received it.

You would be unlikely to get any compensation as there,s no proof that there was actually any money inside the envelope, unless insurance was taken out and contents listed at time of posting, with receipt from post office.

It can end up costing far more posting cash, using a cheaper option of posting, which is the normal stamp.
Its certainly worth paying the extra £2 or so or buying a postal order of which you have a receipt for.

I have also temped at Royal Mail on several occasions and can endorse most of this. It was easy to miss small cards right at the back of the pigeon holes, or which had slipped down and got caught in the gap between the pigeon holes and the back of the sorting frame. As to postcodes, without blowing my own trumpet i like to think I have a decent geographical knowledge of the UK but some of those I worked with seemed incapable of making an educated guess when faced with a letter containing no, or a partial, postcode, as well as those where the postcode had fairly obviously been written wrong and didn't match the town, or where the writing was hard to read-so for example you'd find mail for Sutton, Surrey (SM) which had been mis-sorted and mixed in with mail for Swindon (SN). The postcode for Bristol is BS, but if you mistakenly write BR when addressing the envelope it could end up in Bromley-write BT and it would probably end up in Belfast. One of the funniest ones was with international mail, which was divided into Europe, US/Canada, Australia/New Zealand/Japan/South Africa, and rest of the world-one girl showed me a couple of letters she had for Colombia and Malaysia and asked if they went in the Europe pigeonhole!

I used "Special Delivery Guaranteed" earlier on in the week, was sending cash and Christmas cards, like I do every year. Coincidence I know, this thread (thieving) and the counter clerk asking whether I had discreetly hidden the cash inside the cards. Asked why that would be a problem if I hadn't, particularly as I was paying for a secure means, was answered with "money can be felt through the outer wrapping".

Not once in all those years have I been asked how the money was packed.

Jeez, not exactly confidence building.

they really are shocking, they "lost" about half a dozen parcels to me in the space of a fortnight, i asked what was going on and was told it was my responsibility to chase the parcels down .

only one had tracking, that was delivered - to someone in manchester, i live in cambridge.

they actually could not care less whether you get your post or not really, ours just looks at the door number, he`s not bothered if it`s the right street, or even village.

I ordered a new cheque book just yesterday exactly for this reason.